Phage Crusade “Jeff Summerhayes knows the drill. The bleak hospital corridors, the calls on the intercom, the IV tubes in his arms dangling from their holders like chandeliers—all have been familiar since Summerhayes’s childhood. But the bug was still in him and all the antibiotics had failed. Now he was lying in a bed at Vancouver General Hospital with his sister sitting beside him, both expecting to hear, once again, that he didn’t have long to live.” Mark Czarnecki – Maisonneuve – January 2020
How Devon Freeman died “The circumstances of Devon’s death and its aftermath have left his family and his First Nation, Chippewas of Georgina Island, searching for answers. Why didn’t the group home disclose an earlier suicide attempt? Why was he not taken to the hospital after he first tried to take his life? Why did the police not find his body much sooner? These questions and more could be explored through a proper coroner’s inquest – something his family, his First Nation and the Hamilton Police are coming together to demand.” Kristy Kirkup – The Globe and Mail – January 2020
‘NASA North’ or Final Frontier fantasy? “A confluence of factors make the Nova Scotia site ideal for a spaceport, Matier said. Despite its remote location, the 340-acre site on a swath of provincial Crown land between the communities of Canso, Little Dover and Hazel Hill is well-serviced with access to water, electricity and paved roads nearby and, thanks to a wind farm recently built in the area, the company had an up-to-date environmental assessment to reference — all of which could save MLS ample time and money. Overlooking thousands of kilometres of open ocean, it is far from large populations that could be affected by a launch failure.” Catherine McIntyre – The Logic – January 2020
Auschwitz, 75 years later: What Canada’s survivors remember about the death camp’s horrors “When John Freund was deported to Auschwitz in late 1943, it felt like landing on another planet. As he tried to connect the grim, unfamiliar sights with the world he had left behind, he thought the buildings at the furthest end of the compound looked like factories. “There was smoke coming out of them all the time. I was a naive boy and would say to my friends, ‘What is this? Is this a bakery?’” Mr. Freund recalled in a recent interview.” Tu Thanh Ha – The Globe and Mail – January 2020
Elderly, Confused, and Under Arrest “When Karen Murphy learned her father had dementia, she did everything she could. She went to the Alzheimer Society for advice. She wrote out his medications on a card and stuck it on her parents’ fridge. She paid a visit to the local police department in Sarnia, where he lived, and added his name to a list of the vulnerable—even gave them his photo and asked them to remember that, if he ever became violent, it was the disease talking and not the man. He’d been a mailman, the type to stop and chat, the type to hand out candies at the stores where he delivered. He was a gentle, lovable, huggable man and had never hit anyone, let alone his wife or his kids. But the day he raised his hand against his wife, it was as though he didn’t know who he was.” Alison Motluk – The Local – October 2019
Unmasking Donny Dooley: Newfoundland’s Most Wanted Troll “One day after making a public appeal for the charity through media, Lyver saw a tweet from Dooley suggesting the charity was a naked case of fraud and questioning whether his child had ever existed at all. Those tweets were quietly deleted, so Lyver blocked the Dooley account and moved on. But that only encouraged the troll to ramp up his personal attacks on a man clearly attempting to disengage.” Drew Brown – The Independent – January 2020
Half of Canadians have too few local psychiatrists, or none at all. How can we mend the mental-health gap? “In London, Ont., a 20-year-old man waits a year to see a psychiatrist after he is hospitalized for suicidal behaviour. In Prince Edward Island, even the most serious patients on the provincial triage list are told in November they will wait at least six months to see a psychiatrist. When the only staff psychiatrist at Lake of the Woods District Hospital in Kenora, Ont. decides to move, the community is left begging for help from Thunder Bay, 500 kilometres away, where psychiatrists there already scramble to cover an area roughly the size of France.” Erin Anderssen – The Globe and Mail – January 2020
